A Monthlong intensive starting today!

I’m hesitating to write here about my trip for fear of being misunderstood but then I’m asking everyone to share and really enjoyed the fact that they did so I thought I might as well join in the fun!

I left on August 4 th from Milwaukee by car to drive to the small town of Crestone, CO situated 8,000 feet above sea level to participate in two retreats offered by my Buddhist teacher Tsoknyi Rimpoche III. I’ve been studying with the man since 2003 when he came to visit Urbana for three years in a row offering retreats on 'The Nature of Mind.'

I should define retreat… it’s a period of time where you decide to put time aside to hear, contemplate and practice various teachings. We usually decide to be silent and not wander off the premises. (I’m presently in the space between retreats where I’ve kept a pretty rigorous training schedule but allowed myself a few phone calls to Elizabeth, but little email and no FB!) It’s a protected time that allows you to fully focus on a certain thing that you wish to learn. I usually take time to do this every day when I can and try to do it more intensively during the year by going on retreat. A retreat schedule usually involves at least 4 one hour meditation sittings and two 2 hour lectures. You get up at 5am and go to bed when you are done sitting. By now I’ve done at least 8 week-long (or more) retreats and this will be my first month-long. It is common in the Buddhist world for serious practitioners to go on 3, 9 or 12-year (Yes, you read right - YEARS not months!) retreats and many finish their lives in closed retreat. While you may think this is a lot… consider what a dance major has to go through with 4 years of intense training and then many intensives followed by on the job training for years – it’s not that different.

While in the dance studio, we are usually interested in the movement observed in the body, in coming to retreat to meditate, I’m interested in the observed movement of the mind. Not that I think both are very different… and this is what is making this a research trip and not a solely personal venture. What I know of the Alexander Technique and my mind training ends up helping me teach ballet.

The more I teach dance, the more I realize that dancers are interested in the beneficial aspects of dancing. They like how it feels to be in class away from their usual worries learning something that requires they coordinate their minds and bodies in space. They also like being able to know enough about themselves to communicate “their truths” to others through their entire bodies - independently of style. And usually if your body can speak this “truth” – you had to train the mind to some degree – even if you don’t know you did.

The Buddhists believe that you can’t just hear about knowledge/wisdom – you have to practice it. This makes dancers close cousins with them, as we cannot envision anyone learning to dance without actually dancing. In fact, many people believe it takes 10 years to make a dancer. The difference here is that dancers often don’t realize that it is their minds that collaborated with their bodies to create the dancer. Dancers can easily dismiss their intelligence (with the help of the rest of the world of course…) and think that they are “just” movers. The opposite never occurs to them… that most university students learn about their fields through a body that they have never trained to learn with. Let me repeat this: they learn subjects like math and psychology with (for the most part) an untrained, mis-calibrated, unruly and unaware body. After all, it is the body that sits in the lecture hall, listening and thinking… not just the “mind” or whatever else they might think.

So this is what I do all day. I research how the mind works by listening to the teacher and practicing. You would think that by now I would know. But while I conceptually know more than I used to – the beauty is to realize this knowledge in your whole self so that you are not dancing putting on a brave face while totally scared, but more dancing from your inner place of truth – confident, expressive, free and happy. Not a small feat but well worth the work.

I will be thinking of you and wishing you well as you start the semester.

Best, Luc.